


Five Dates

by De_Nugis



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel/Dean Winchester (background) - Freeform, First Time, Ghost Possession, M/M, Moose, Post-Canon, sexual healing, subby!Sam, wincest (past; background)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2019-12-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:28:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22058557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/De_Nugis/pseuds/De_Nugis
Summary: Or, four times Sam and Cas went on dates and one time they stayed home.
Relationships: Castiel/Sam Winchester
Comments: 28
Kudos: 79
Collections: SPN J2 Xmas Exchange





	Five Dates

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kisahawklin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kisahawklin/gifts).



> To kisahawklin: first, apologies for the late gift. This fic kicked my ass -- so many of your likes are my likes that I couldn't make up my mind. This doesn't exactly have ace Cas, but it does have Cas negotiating a nonhuman relationship to sex. It doesn't exactly have wincestiel, but the possibility could be there in the future. It doesn't quite have end-of-the-world confessions, but it does have confessions after the world doesn't end. And it has Sam cooking. I hope you find something to like here.
> 
> To the general reader: note that there is Destiel here and some background wincest, but it's really a Sastiel fic.

Proem:

At the end of the world (it never takes) Sam had served a brief and unsatisfying stint as God. He’s not doing that again. But he does believe that he was better at it than Cas, given that Cas had been possessed by Leviathans and had ended up melting. That thought is a confidence boost that Sam keeps firmly in mind when he finds himself, a poor, forked creature once again (to be fair, Chuck had been poor and forked, and also less endowed than Sam in every way), back at the Bunker and catches the angel he’s been pining for and the brother he … has complicated feelings about, OK? _in flagrante delicto_. 

“So, who’s God?” Dean asks, after he’s hugged Sam and put his pants back on, unfortunately in that order.

That’s an interesting theological question. The universe hasn’t exploded and their lives haven’t stopped mid-sentence, so Sam has to assume that the vacancy he’d left — maybe it would help to think of it as The Vacancy — is doing its job.

“I thought I’d just retire the whole concept,” says Sam.

God isn’t one of those essential functions, like light or gravity. Sam hadn’t been controlling any narratives during his temporary apotheosis. He hadn’t even had spoiler privileges. For instance, while he’s not shocked that Dean and Cas are sleeping together now, it’s not like he knew. He was not an omniscient voyeur. 

And the news that Cas is also planning to date Sam comes as a complete surprise.

“So, you and Dean,” Sam begins, when Dean has gone off to, like, shower and find clean boxers or something. “That’s great, Cas. I’m glad you guys worked things out.”

And it is great. Sam is glad. If he’s having trouble with the conversation, it’s probably just because Cas is still naked and apparently unfazed by the fact. His trenchcoat is draped over one of the card catalogs. The white buttondown on top of it has one arm bent in a rakishly inscrutable gesture. Sam averts his gaze. Looking at Cas’s discarded shirt feels weirder than seeing Cas’s now placidly resting dick.

“Thank you,” says Cas. “It’s enjoyable, having sex with Dean. As you know.”

Sam is not discussing his on-again, off-again incest history with a naked angel. It’s been off-again for a really long time, anyway. Things mostly work better that way. And now Dean and Cas are together, which is great.

“We don’t really do that, lately,” he says. “And now you guys are obviously, uh.”

Cas gives him a probing look. It’s a thing about Cas, how intense his face gets. The longer he holds Sam’s gaze the more irrelevant it is that he’s naked. Nudity has nothing to do with the way Sam’s heart pounds and his face scalds. Finally Cas gives a curt nod, like a general acknowledging a scout when he’s finished reading their report, and starts to get dressed with unhurried, efficient movements. 

Sam waits. It feels like Cas isn’t done with the conversation. And any concerns Sam may have about giving himself away are in the locking the stable door category, now. Be real, they probably were after the first or fourth probing. In retrospect, the horse may have been stolen the first time Sam shook Cas’s hand. 

“We should go on a date,” says Cas, once he’s reassembled the white shirt and the blue tie and beige coat around the intense gaze. 

“Uh,” says Sam. “We?” _Date?_

“Or dates,” says Cas. “The two of us. I may want to have sex with you.”

_May?_

“Won’t Dean mind?” Is betraying Dean going to be something Sam and Cas do together now?

“I’ll talk to him, of course. But he and I follow individual paths. Neither of us cares to be a couple, _per se_. It’s not as though our divergences will part us. They never have. And you are surely an interest Dean will have no trouble understanding.”

Sam thinks that that’s wildly optimistic of Cas. Did Cas use to be wildly optimistic? Did everything change while Sam was being God? It’s not like he’d served a long term. Maybe he just forgot stuff.

“This is a whole new you, Cas,” he says.

“I reevaluated some things when Chuck was gone and Jack had found his home. I decided to pursue what I want. I also decided to avoid drama.”

Those two goals might possibly be less mutually exclusive in the current godless universe. Sam feels an echo of the frisson of freedom he’d had when he’d decided he didn’t need to be a laborious Atlas or a capricious Zeus, he could just walk away and go home. The world has gone right on, spinning like a top, turning up this new Cas. It’s a world in which he and Cas might go on a date.

They have a history of probings, after all. A statistically significant number of said probings had been Cas’s idea. That Cas might be interested, that’s not an insane notion. That Sam might be able to not just refuse what he doesn’t want, but get what he wants, and that without fucking up the world or Dean, well. There are some things about what Sam wants that Cas knows better than most. It’s a minefield. Cas is proposing they stroll across it together.

When you put it like that.

“We can, uh, give it a try,” Sam says, “see where it goes.”

“It will be complicated,” says Cas, “and possibly disastrous.”

He makes it sound like a promise. 

i.

Cas has bizarrely conventional, or perhaps terrifyingly tactical, ideas about what constitutes a date. At least, when it comes to Sam. With Dean he probably has a few beers at some local joint, maybe utilizes his angelic grasp of physics to win a couple of games of pool. Sam he’s taken to a nice restaurant, the kind of restaurant that has candles on the table and multiple vegan options. Sam is eating something sophisticated with squash and sage and chickpeas. It’s pretty good. Cas is having fish that comes whole, face and all. Perhaps that makes its molecules more exciting. Its blank eye looks askance at Sam. 

They’re both drinking a white wine that Cas had not only chosen but tasted in front of a hovering waiter and granted a sacerdotal nod of approval. Really, Cas is taking to the guy-on-a-date role so effortlessly that it doesn’t even look weird that he’s wearing his coat.

Cas has also made it clear that he’s paying. Sam thinks it should be the other way around — he has a lingering sense of divine generosity, and also he’s more experienced with credit card fraud and therefore less likely to get them arrested — but Cas had simply said _No._

“So, if Dean is OK with this,” Sam says— and he certainly seems to be, he’d said, _So Cas wants to date you, huh? Good luck, Sammy,_ and gone out whistling — , “why all the here-be-dragons stuff?”

Sam can think of reasons on his end why this whole thing could end in disaster, but he isn’t clear on where the risk is for Cas.

Cas takes a careful bite of his fish, followed by a careful sip of his wine.

“You and I have had intimate encounters,” he says. “Some of them have been intense. Searingly so.” 

_Searingly?_ Sam shifts uncomfortably in his chair and glances around to make sure no waiters are nearby. They’d assume Cas was talking about sex, of course, but that wouldn’t necessarily help. 

“I remember reaching into you, touching your soul,” Cas continues relentlessly. “I think about it sometimes, the way your soul stretches when I probe deeply.” 

Sam looks around again, not because any waiters could have arrived in the last few seconds, just for something to do with his eyes. He’s getting a boner. Cas may be getting a boner. That’s not exactly unheard of in situations where people who may be going to have sex go out on a date, but Cas was right. Things may be becoming complicated.

“Aspects of those experiences were uncomfortable for me,” says Cas, staring disconcertingly at Sam’s sternum. “And for you, of course. There’s the possibility of coma. It leaves me with a dilemma.”

Wait, so is Cas working round to something like that thing where Klingons can’t have sex with humans without killing them, or how Superman’s jizz could be shrapnel? But Dean hadn’t looked very damn comatose riding Cas’s dick. He’d looked enthusiastically awake. And it’s not like Cas can’t heal damage. Usually. Mostly. If there’s … stretching, that’s a risk Sam is willing to take. He shifts in his chair again, trying to focus. Cas clearly isn’t intending this conversation as dirty talk. He’s trying to be thoughtful, to make sure Sam has informed consent.

“I appreciate your concern, Cas. It’s nice of you, really. But I think I’d, uh, be OK, having sex with you. You don’t have to worry about me. I’m up for it.” So to speak.

“Yes,” says Cas. This time his glance trails down from Sam’s sternum to where the tablecloth falls discreetly over his lap. “But you’re mistaking my point. You aren’t grasping the dilemma.”

“I think you’re going to have to explain the dilemma.” Perhaps they can get through the dilemma part of the evening soon and go on to making awkward date small talk and maybe having dessert.

“We are trying to translate our relationship into sexual terms,” says Cas. “Or we are trying to determine if that is possible. It may not be. It’s unhelpful, under the circumstances, to continue to discuss soul-probing.”

That’s … one way of looking at a date, Sam supposes. Though it takes some chutzpah for Cas to present the probing talk as a _we_ problem. 

“You mean you want us to switch from, uh, probing to sex? I mean, I’m OK with that, too. Not that the probing wasn’t, uh, mutual.” 

The thought of no more probing is saddening, but sex is good, too. Maybe they could have sex down in the infirmary some time.

Cas fixes him with another one of those looks.

“I don’t want to do the things we’ve done again. Those are roads I don’t want to go down. But I don’t find the thought of having sex with you immediately appealing. Though it’s still an idea I’m pursuing.”

“Oh,” says Sam. “Uh. It’s not like I need expectations to enjoy your company or something. I mean, thank you. The restaurant is great. I like this chickpea stuff. But I don’t want, I mean, you suggested dating because you thought you might, uh, want sex. If you’re not attracted to me, the having sex part might not work out.”

Sam’s dick is following this whole exchange closely. Its reactions are mixed. On the one hand, it looks like it’s not getting sex tonight, and that’s disappointing. But it remains intrigued by the probing alternative. Cas had said no probing, but he’d definitely dwelt on the subject a lot for an option he was dismissing. Sam doesn’t seem to be having the same dilemma here that Cas is, but his dick might be. That’s … interesting.

“I am not attracted to you as such,” says Cas. “I appreciate your hair,” he adds. “I find the texture of your soul compelling. The sounds you make during probing are memorable. But I’m an angel. I’m not really a sexual being.”

If Cas took Sam on a date just to let him down gently — assuming that this is Cas’s idea of letting someone down gently — Sam wishes that he’d put his money where his mouth is and shut up about probing. And a treacherous, unreconstructed bit of Sam’s brain is pointing out that Cas had looked a whole lot like a sexual being when Sam had walked into the Bunker the other day.

Don’t make assumptions, Sam reminds that corner of his brain. Sexuality is complex. Angel sexuality is probably particularly complex. Be sensitive. 

“That’s fine,” Sam says. “Really, Cas.”

“Sometimes the distance between my substance and my vessel narrows. Sometimes my desires are like yours, a unified reaction of body and spirit. It would be helpful if that were possible with you. You’re interested, evidently. It should be possible. It was possible with Dean.”

Yeah, and if Sam has to rely on preserving his dignity rather than on actually being a good person to be OK with the guess-you’re-just-not-enough-like-Dean thing, he’ll go with that. Dignity’s better than nothing. 

“It doesn’t always work that way, Cas. At least, as far as my human experience goes. Or, uh, being God. Though I didn’t do that for long. Or being a vessel or a soulless hunting machine, for that matter. People, uh, beings can be compatible in a lot of ways but the spark isn’t there. If you’re not feeling it, you don’t have to, like, apologize, or change, or anything.” 

Not that Cas has been apologizing, exactly.

Cas’s jaw sets. He looks like he does when he’s about to smite his way through a room full of demons.

“I want to do this,” he says. “We simply need to find the right vibe. We’ll carry on with the date. We’ll experiment with other venues as needed. We could discuss your feelings. People do that on dates.”

OK, so Sam’s night so far includes multiple mentions of probing, being informed that his date is not attracted to him, and hearing Cas say _vibe_. It can only get better from here. And, despite some dampening comments, it seems like, by Cas’s standards, Sam’s bringing a lot to the table. There’s his searing soul magnetism. There’s his equal, in fact superior because no melting, status as ex-Deity. And if Cas wants feelings, Sam has them — jealous, conflicted, horny, a whole cornucopia. It’s not quite soullessness or parasitic grace or a God-wound, but Cas does seem to get a kick from diagnosing. He may be moving away from probing, but Sam is still the guy Cas likes to probe. He can prove that. He takes a gulp of wine and considers.

“I guess Dean has that effect on people,” he says. “I mean, the thing where it’s easy for you with him. He’s good at that, being human. I guess I’ve always envied that. Not that I mind about you and him. But, you know. I’ve tried a lot of other things besides being human. I tried being God. You probably wonder why I keep coming back to human when I kind of suck at it.”

Cas frowns.

“When I said we could talk about your feelings, I didn’t mean I wanted to hear your confession. For some reason that’s something people think I should be interested in, as an angel. I’m not.”

Now Sam is getting irritated. OK, so Cas isn’t attracted to him, but he at least used to be into Sam being a fuck-up.

“For some reason you think that being told my conversation is dull is something I’d be interested in on a date. It isn’t.”

They glare at each other briefly. And, wait, hey, Sam’s sensing definite chemistry. Maybe it’s going to be that simple. A spark of antagonism could be the answer. Sam feels his native optimism returning. They could have hatesex. They nearly did back when Sam had been soulless, after all. Sam leans across the table and kisses Cas, aggressively.

Their tongues battle for dominance.

After a while Cas breaks the kiss and leans back. Sam looks at him, probably all panting and questioning like some fucking golden retriever. So much for hatesex. 

Luckily, the lighting is dim. 

Cas shakes his head.

“No,” he says. “That isn’t the vibe.”

“Oh,” says Sam. The boner he’s had since Cas started in on probing seems, if anything, to be taking this set-back as encouragement. It might as well be jumping up and down and squealing. _Cas rejected me! I got turned down by Cas!_ It’s embarrassing. But damn, it feels good. 

“Don’t feel bad,” says Cas. He’s said that to Sam quite often in various ways through the years and it has mostly been comforting, but not always in the ways Cas seems to think it will be. “As I explained, I’m not really a sexual being. This is bound to complicated. I’m sure we’ll arrive at the correct set of circumstances.”

Sam sighs. 

“This isn’t really how I expected coming back this time to go,” he says.

“I never expected to be dividing my affections between Lucifer’s vessel and Michael’s vessel, both in many ways unprepossessing examples of their difficult kind, and yet here we are.”

“Yeah,” says Sam. “Here we are.” 

Sitting in a restaurant where Cas is running up a bill that won’t be a cent less than two hundred dollars without even aiming to get lucky tonight, whatever I’m-not-really-a-sexual-being Cas means by lucky. Looked at from some angles Cas’s approach is kind of chivalrous. And he’d mentioned affections. That’s … probably not something Cas says without meaning it. Sam needs to think about that.

“We’ll go on another date in a few days,” says Cas. He waves his fingers discreetly at the waiter. “Right now, we’re having dessert. Dessert menus, please.”

“Yeah,” says Sam, “OK.”

ii.

Their second date is short.

Sam felt, very reasonably, that he should take Cas out somewhere this time. Back-and-forth, give-and-take, maybe tit-for-tat. Cas overrules that with an ease that suggests that he might be quite at home these days in that weird power-suit aesthetic that heaven goes in for. He’s like a CEO. CEOs aren’t really Sam’s type but Cas could, like, run a nonprofit. 

“We’ll go for a walk on a beach,” Cas says. “I’ll arrange it.”

Sam could have arranged a walk on a beach himself, at the cost of a few days driving that might admittedly have been a strain, given Cas’s version of date conversation. Though they wouldn’t even have had to get to a coast. What’s greater than a Great Lake? In November. Well, Air B&B rates are probably modest in November. 

Sam couldn’t have arranged Hawaii. Well, he could. But it would have been expensive and Dean might have been pissed. 

Or maybe it’s not Hawaii. Maybe it’s somewhere else. Somewhere very else. Wherever it is faces west. The sun is setting. Surf crashes. There’s a warm, tugging wind tossing a rich variety of palm trees. Some species of dazzling white seabirds are flying around. There’s no one else to be seen in the whole perfect cove. It’s staggeringly beautiful. 

Cas takes Sam’s hand and they walk without talking, barefoot. A few inches of live, tickling water suck at Sam’s toes. 

“Sam,” says Cas, when they come to a far point of rocky sand. The sun has gone all technicolor purple and orange, getting ready to immerse itself in the horizon. 

So maybe this is it, Sam thinks. This could be Cas’s vibe. He’s arranged a romantic beach setting that pushes his buttons and now they’re going to have movie beach-sex. It’s a bit, uh, something that Cas has made all the arrangements, brought Sam here in his side-along angel teleport, that now he’s choosing the decisive moment, that he’d decreed this whole dating thing to begin with.

 _Something_ , Sam’s dick thinks, testing, stretching a bit, exploring the possibilities. The wind is still doing its salty, hair-tangling, palm-tossing thing. It’s hard, here, to think of a boner as a separate thing, apart from the wind and the granular mush of the sand and the wild, harsh gull-calls. It’s hard to feel like Sam has messed up being a human or being God when he’s not sure that those distinctions make sense here. 

Cas drops his hand and looks at him seriously. Cas looks at home. He could be the angel of this place.

“You gave us our wings back, while you were God. That was gracious. I’ve been meaning to thank you for it, on behalf of myself and all the remaining angels. This is thank you.”

He touches Sam’s hand once more, a light, unmistakably platonic pressure. The sun slips down. Cas bows his head and breathes out and they’re back at the Bunker. 

OK, Cas is a fucking tease. Sam jerks off that night, not some quick, functional thing, really going to town and taking his time. He puts on classical music. He uses the good lube. He comes in a crashing, perfectly timed crescendo. His toes curl. His limbs are weighed down with a drowning backwash of tropic pleasure.

“You’re welcome,” he says to the pillow.

iii.

Their third date almost gets them both killed. 

Sam looks around the Pattern that’s using his eyes to see if he can see Cas. Cas is right there, unfamiliar in a black t-shirt. Sam’s hand is holding an angel-blade to his heart. 

Sam had thought the anti-possession tattoo would work on ghosts. They’re souls, after all, like demons. Or he thinks he’d thought it would.

 _He burned it off you, once_ , the Pattern reminds him. _He’s sleeping with Dean. Dean is the one he wants._

It had been Sam’s idea, to work a case. He’d been in a weird mood. It had made sense, though. Murder-suicides at a gay club, no motive, one bewildered survivor whose bullet had missed his own brain, swearing he barely knew the guy he’d killed. Repeating pattern usually equals ghost. They might as well go undercover as a couple, since they’re dating. 

Maybe Sam’s been possessed since Cas showed up for their case-date in skinny jeans and a black tee and stylized, smoky makeup around his eyes. Maybe it’s been since Sam noticed that Cas was wearing rings. Heavy silver, flamboyant, three on one finger here, two on another there, bare in between. Sam could drive himself crazy, trying to figure out the pattern. Maybe Sam’s always been possessed. _Plus ça change._

There’s still the hunter, though, in Sam’s brain. This is a ghost, the hunter tells him. It’s nothing, just a remnant of dead betrayal. Sam is living, human. And Cas is an angel. For Sam this blade is a knife, ordinary danger. For Cas it’s the thing that is forged to kill him, and Sam’s hand is holding it. 

Maybe Sam’s only been possessed since this sad, decaying thing slipped through his defenses to use Sam’s hand to kill Cas in belated, senseless revenge for something that someone else did, so long ago that the ghost doesn’t even remember. Something that Sam was stupid enough to think he recognized, that he should get involved in. 

It’s really only the hunter who’s involved, though. Whatever Sam and Cas have going on is complicated, sure, maybe frustrating, but it’s better than this. Sam is better than this. He’s not trapped in his own pattern. He can choose.

He twists his hand away from Cas’s heart and the knife goes between his own ribs. That’s not exactly what the Pattern wants, but it will take it.

It was probably something Cas was aiming to avoid. For that matter, whatever Sam’s ambivalences, he hadn’t exactly been hoping the night would turn out like this, either. He doesn’t enjoy the sensation of his lung filling with blood. But he’s human. For him it’s just a knife. And if one of the team has to be critically wounded, it’s better for everyone if it isn’t the medic. 

Sam’s hand drops off the hilt of the blade as he falls. The Pattern can’t use it if Sam’s arm isn’t working. 

Cas kneels beside Sam. He still looks strange, powerful, the outfit, the makeup, the rings, and it’s not just the Pattern responding, but his face has a familiar angry calm. Sam’s pretty sure that any response to that is all him.

“You’re going to regret, very much, that you did this,” he says, presumably to the Pattern, and “Hold on,” presumably to Sam. Right, there’s not much point healing Sam if he’s just healing the ghost. Cas moves out of Sam’s sight and Sam hears him rummaging behind the evacuated bar. There are blue lights coming and going on the ceiling. The police must be outside, working out how to deal with a hostage situation. 

Cas comes back with a box of Morton’s kosher salt. _Good move_ , Sam thinks. The Pattern twists — avoidance, anticipation? — and licks Sam’s lips.

“Oh, clever,” it says. “Your slut boyfriend is going to enjoy this. He’s got you where he wants you now, you know.”

“Shut up,” says Cas harshly. He pours salt into his cupped hand. It overflows. Coarse crystals skitter and bounce on the floor. That’s because Cas’s hand is shaking. Cas puts his arm behind Sam’s shoulders and holds him against him. He claps the other hand, full of salt, over Sam’s nose and mouth. 

Sam bucks and struggles, inhaling salt, shifting the knife, more blood. His vision swirls with black-salt sparkles. One of Cas’s rings is splitting his lip. Cas grips him inexorably and goes on choking him. This is going to be the last thing Sam feels, Cas’s hard arm gripping him to Cas’s hard body while Cas digs around in him for the thing that’s wrong. He’s going to die feeling himself getting hard. He's going to die with a boner. Cas is going to kill him. This is how it ends. 

The Pattern crests and tumbles.

“Get out of him,” says Cas in Sam’s ear. “Swallow, Sam, damn you.”

They can still win this, Sam’s hunter brain thinks, and, _Yeah, fuck you, get out._ He can use his last non-breath for some cheap, luxurious surrender or he can use it to live. At worst, if he tries, he’ll die knowing whether or not a person can swallow while asphyxiating. Now that he’s thought of the question, he’s curious. Cas would want to know, too. Cas is interested in stuff like that.

Sam swallows, a choking mouthful of bitter salt. Cas’s grip loosens abruptly. Sam slumps forward, retching salt and blood and ghost. Fuck. _Now_ he feels like he’s dying. 

There’s a flash of white heat that’s probably Cas smiting the ghost. Good. Salt and burn. 

Sam hopes that Cas is about to remember that Sam has a knife in his lung.

Sam has no idea what Cas says to the police and the club manager and the crowd. Maybe he flashes a badge, maybe he just goes with the truth. That works, sometimes. Sam sits on a bench a ways back in the dark till the people are gone and Cas comes and sits down beside him.

“Did you intend that? Were you bait? Did you use our, our situation as a trap?”

The strangeness of Cas’s undercover club outfit has faded. He looks like Cas, now. He doesn’t sound angry. And Sam can’t very well be, when Cas is asking the same questions he is. 

“I don’t know, Cas,” Sam says. “Not really. It’s, uh. It’s complicated.” His voice is thready and raw. He feels wrung out, but lighter, drawing air in and out of his healed lung.

“I’ve tried to tell you the truth,” says Cas, “about this. About my intentions. My desires. I think you owe me the same.”

That’s fair. Sam shuts his eyes — God, he’s tired, and they still have to get home — and tries to think. Not about what answer Cas wants, but about what Cas wants answered.

“I wasn’t trying to get myself killed,” he says. “I, uh. I don’t think I was trying to maneuver you into stuff. I’m sorry that I kind of did. I don’t, I really don’t know, most of the time, if I think I’m a lot more messed up than I am or if I’m a lot more messed up than I think I am. Maybe it’s both. But I’m, uh, I’m actually doing OK with our situation. This may sound weird, but I’m enjoying the dating. Near-death experiences and all. And, anyway, it was a hunt. I bet on what I thought would work. An angel blade is more of an issue for you. I knew you could heal me. I figured you’d come up with something, for the ghost. I trust you to have my back. And we won.”

There, that’s the essentials. It’s not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, but Sam’s body told the rest of it for him in there, and Cas doesn’t like confessions.

Cas reaches out a careful, steady hand and tucks a few stray hairs back from Sam’s forehead. 

“We’ll win this, too,” he says. “We will both have our desire, without harm. That’s a promise.”

Heat twists in Sam’s gut that has nothing to do with a salt emetic.

“You don’t get to talk about safe sex when you just tried to brine me,” he says.

“I was saving your life,” says Cas. “Anyway, I thought brining was salt _water_.”

“Yeah, whatever,” Sam says. “Thanks, by the way. For the life-saving or for the letting me live out my fantasy where you order me to swallow. I’m not saying which.”

Sam can’t quite believe he said that, but Cas smiles.

“You’re welcome,” he says.

iv.

“Where would you like to go? On our next date.”

Really? It’s not that Sam is surprised that Cas is still dating him — he’d made a promise, and, anyway, Cas is a stubborn bastard, he’s clearly going to go on with this till they get it right or it really does kill them — Sam just hadn’t thought, after last time, that he got to choose the venue again, like, ever.

“Are you sure you want me to choose?”

“Yes. But please think of something uneventful.”

Yeah, after last time Sam owes it to Cas to think, about what he wants, and what Cas wants, and what they can offer each other. That’s the kind of stuff you’re supposed to think about, dating. Sam ponders.

Giving the angels back their wings had been a divine impulse-thing, mostly because Sam couldn’t figure out what he was supposed to be doing. But he’s glad he did that for Cas. Cas had meant his Hawaii thank-you. And that, that gives Cas the chance to offer Sam something. Possibilities, the chance to want things with some limitations removed. Sam gave them both that. He should take it.

“New York,” he says, “I want to go to New York.” It’s getting towards Christmas. Sam has a vague image of ice-skaters. That’s … a really incongruous setting for him and Cas. “Can we go to the Museum of Natural History?” That seems more suitable. And, anyway, he wants it.

“I enjoy natural history,” says Cas. “Yes. Tomorrow.”

Sam dresses up a little the next day. Not that Cas will change his own outfit, this time. Not that Sam would want him to. They’re not going undercover. Cas — trench-coat, blue tie, dark suit slightly rumpled — is who Sam wants to, to step out with. (Is that even an idiom? Where did Sam’s brain find it?) Sam has no idea if Cas ever notices what Sam's wearing. But now that he’s thought of it as stepping out, Sam’s getting an old-fashioned vibe. Cas is all about vibes. Sam puts on the Men of Letters clothes he hasn’t worn for a while, the sweater vest and that tweedy jacket. 

Sam went to the museum once before, with Dean, when he was, like, ten or so. He’s never been back. They don’t tend to spend a lot of time in cities. Some of it isn’t like he remembers. It might have been renovated. Or it might just be that he’s seeing things with new eyes.

They start with dinosaurs. Cas critiques. Everyone must think Sam is dating a crazed paleontologist. Little do they know. Sam cranes his neck at huge, empty ribcages and feels strangely calm. He’s been God, he’s been soulless, he’s been in the Cage. He’s been an angel-vessel, a demon-host. In some ways he’s less human than the dinosaurs. But here he is in his Man of Letters clothes, drawing air into working lungs. He remembers, a little bit, from being God, what it’s like to grasp the kind of time that’s in Cas’s head. He’s glad he had that glimpse. He’s glad, too, to be back again in his own skull, listening to Cas kvetch.

Cas touches the small of Sam’s back lightly, a quick pressure. They move on from the remnants of unprevented apocalypse to things that are still around. Marine Life, depth supplied by a couple of flights of stairs.

The squid and sperm whale diorama’s the one thing Sam remembers clearly from his other visit. Not that it had scared him, exactly. By then he’d known about monsters under the surface. But it had stuck with him. Now he feels a kind of nostalgia. The whole, murky, frozen-in-time battle looks hopelessly, hopefully significant and imagined. Epic struggles are never like that.

“Drama,” Cas says disapprovingly. He touches Sam’s hip this time, steering him up the stairs and around towards North American Mammals.

OK. Cas admitted he has a thing about Sam’s hair. Sam can kind of see that. But now his memory flips through occasions when him and Cas have hugged. Cas’s hands tend to linger. Not at hug height; they slip to Sam’s waist, the small of his back, his hip. There was even that (seriously strange in retrospect) occasion when Cas had just … not let go, swinging Sam around as if they were dancing. 

If this is a dance, Cas is leading. Sam may have chosen the venue, but Cas knows where they’re going, where he’s taking them. 

When they’d started this dating business Cas had been the one with the dilemma. It had been painfully clear what Sam had wanted. Now Cas has found his footing, it seems like, his intricate footwork. It’s that thrum of transmitted certainty as much as the brief, directing touches that’s getting Sam hard this time, setting his blood dancing in anticipation.

Go on a date with Cas, get a boner. Sam’s getting used to that.

“Here,” says Cas.

He’s stopped in front of the diorama moose. Sam sighs inwardly. Moose jokes get old. To be honest, moose are kind of a boner-killer. But Cas means well. 

“Did you know that Julius Caesar thought elks had no knees?” Sam says. That had been the high point of Latin 201. And it lets him sound appreciative of Cas’s moose gesture. “European elks. Which are US moose. I think some German tribesman was pulling his leg. He told Caesar that they couldn’t lie down. The elks, that is. Moose. They had to just lean against trees to sleep. So, get this, the people who hunted them would go out and cut notches in the tree trunks. As soon as an elk leaned on it, crash! elk and tree both went down. And the elk would be shit out of luck, because no knees. It couldn’t stand up. The hunters would just come around and collect it.”

“That’s amusing,” Cas says, unamused. He puts his hand on Sam’s back, heading him out of the hall and towards the stairs. They start down. There are lion heads on the brass banisters. “It wasn’t the moral I had in mind, however.”

“You had a moral?” says Sam. Does he want to know? Is the Parable of the Moose an improvement on moose jokes?

Cas stops and turns to face him. They’re halfway down the stairs, Sam’s back against the banister. 

“I wanted you to look at the moose for a reason. You, you mistake your kinship. If I called you a moose, I wouldn’t be making a joke, or a reference to wrongheaded lore from Julius Caesar. I would be saying that you are dangerous and ruminant. Megafauna. Those are rare, nowadays. That you go off by yourself. That you are a browser, a concentrate selector, not a grazer. That you have seasons when you carry something that is part of you and yet alien and that you balance it gracefully. That you have survived a long time. That I like to watch how you move. That your world shouldn’t be being destroyed in ways that harm you. ”

Sam has nothing at all to say to that. That’s OK. Sam talking isn’t the next thing on Cas’s agenda. Cas tugs his head down and they kiss.

Sam’s not out to battle for dominance this time. He’s being megafauna, bending a little awkwardly to Cas’s height, like a browsing moose. His role in this ecosystem isn’t apex or predator, and he doesn’t need it to be. That’s not how Cas sees him, and it’s not like Sam needs to assert himself against the way Cas sees him. Cas sees him … without diminishment. He’s offering him a whole expansive forest.

Sam’s knees unlock bit by bit, till his weight is almost all on the lion-banister. It doesn’t feel like weakness, though, or falling. It feels like something in him is being set free.

v.

“I don’t want to have sex with you,” Cas announces.

They’re in the Bunker kitchen at regular not-a-date dinner time. Dean is on one of his quality-time-with-Baby, work-an-old-fashioned-case, maybe-get-laid trips. Now that he’s been back a while Sam can see, a bit, how it works for Dean and Cas. And how it’s working for the three of them, where it might go. Sometimes he hunts with Dean, or on his own. Sometimes Cas does. This time they both stayed home.

Sam’s been experimenting with cooking. He’s claimed a cabinet and put lentils in it. He now has red lentils, green lentils, black lentils, and French lentils, because apparently in Lentil Land French is a color. The French lentils are sort of speckled. He’s got some other legumes. And he’s branched out from salads, vegetablewise. There’s even a Jerusalem artichoke, though Sam has yet to figure out what exactly it is or what the hell he’s supposed to do with it.

Sam has gone on experimenting with cooking even as it’s become abundantly clear that cooking, for him, is not a natural talent. Not like it is for Dean.

Yeah, Sam is still jealous. Inborn cooking talent, Cas’s dick, those fucking emerald eyes, you name it, if Dean has it, Sam is jealous. Sam thinks being a bit jealous is probably OK. It’s part of the ecosystem.

“I was mistaken at the outset,” Cas continues. “I’ve come to a new conclusion.” 

Normally when a guy who got you weak-kneed with an _alces alces_ -themed kiss a few days ago says he doesn’t want to sleep with you and talks about mistakes, it means hopes are going to be dashed. But Sam is getting the hang of dating Cas. He waits for what’s coming. Also, he’s trying to open coconut milk and the vintage Can Opener of Letters demands his concentration. He swears as it slips. White, viscous coconut milk spatters everywhere. The lid cuts into Sam’s thumb.

Cas goes on talking. Apparently Sam bleeding out from a coconut-milk-inflicted wound qualifies as the kind of drama New Cas is avoiding. Sam sticks his thumb briefly under the tap, then tears off some paper towel and applies pressure.

“I thought you were like Dean. That was my error. None of this was difficult with Dean.” A part of the ecosystem, Sam reminds himself. Beneficial, probably. Important. Cas smiles. “That doesn’t mean Dean is lesser, of course. But I enjoy complexity.”

Wait, what?

“What?” says Sam.

Cas stands up and moves in front of Sam. 

“Dean is the most entirely human soul I’ve known,” he says. Sam lets the possible Star Trek allusion slide. “You never have been. That isn’t a flaw or a darkness. A challenge, perhaps. A complexity. One I misread. I thought we should be more human with one another.”

Is Cas circling back around to probing? Is he going to probe Sam in a kitchen that’s currently covered with coconut milk? Is that even hygienic? Or is Cas about to propose some weird moose-sex thing?

“With Dean I am human. With Dean I slake myself on humanity. With you I am an angel. The things I do to you aren’t human things. I’m an angel of the Lord. I’d like you to acknowledge that.”

Sam was God. But he didn’t like it much. Cas had touched his hand to the small of Sam’s back, there in the museum, steering Sam where he wanted him, and Sam had gone. He’d found open space there, a forest.

Why not, after all?

Sam slides to his knees on the kitchen floor.

“Good,” says Cas, and the blood thunders in Sam’s ears.

Cas looms over him. His hands smooth Sam’s hair back while he speaks, tangling and tugging and soothing.

“You’ve been very patient, Sam. You’ve been willing to postpone, to accommodate. That’s admirable, of course. But we’ve come to an end of my patience with your patience.”

 _You’re the one who just made up your mind_ , Sam thinks. But then, Cas has been messing with him. He may not have really known he was, but he was. And Sam had been enjoying being messed with. It had been a good game.

The game’s over, now. There’s no dim lighting and no white tablecloth. This isn’t a beach date where Sam will go home afterwards and jerk off in the privacy of his own bed. This isn’t the club where Sam twisted things round to what neither of them wanted. This isn’t even the museum, a public place, neutral, where Cas had done no more than coax Sam to accept his blessing. This is it.

“I’ve got, uh. A pretty human boner,” Sam says. Confesses, maybe, though Cas doesn’t like confessions, especially not of things he already knows. “I, um, I mean. I get that this isn’t about sex for you. I respect that. But if you’re going to, like, do something, I’m pretty sure I’m going to, uh.” 

When Sam had first thought he was heading towards sleeping with Cas, he hadn’t foreseen that he’d be unable to say _come_. It’s just, Cas is wearing his trenchcoat. And he’s looming.

“Yes,” says Cas. “I’m going to take care of that. I promised you that your desire would be met. As will mine.”

“Are you going to choke me with salt?” 

Cas shakes his head.

“I’m not going to hurt you this time. I’m going to heal you.”

Oh. Well, Sam does have a thing about doctors. He can’t produce a knife in the ribs this time, at least, without getting up and opening drawers, but he did cut his thumb on a can lid. Maybe Cas can work with that.

Cas kneels carefully and starts to unbutton Sam’s shirt. Sam tries not to move while Cas pushes his overshirt back — apparently they’re not flinging things on chairs — and then pulls his undershirt over his head. He leaves Sam’s arms tangled, twisted behind his back. Sam’s breath is coming hard. Cas trails his hand lightly over his diaphragm. The fingers sink in, just a little. Soul-play? It sounds absurd. It isn’t.

“Castiel,” says Sam. It sounds different from Cas. It’s a different vibe.

“I’ve always enjoyed healing,” Cas says conversationally. “I like to feel that I’m contributing, that I can help. I like to be efficacious. I dislike that my Father made this world and put his creatures in it and then afflicted them with sickness and pain. I dislike that intensely.” His hand’s on the surface now, nails biting into Sam’s shoulder. “And I like the power. I like you on the receiving end of my power. You have trouble with pain and pleasure, Sam. As we’ve seen. You’re an adept of postponement. I’m going to work on that. I’m going to work with that. Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” Sam says. 

The answer’s always been yes. Cas bows his head for a moment.

“All right,” he says. “I’m going to send you away for a while. Then I’m going to summon you back. An exercise in postponement. It will be intense. Look at me.”

Sam meets Cas’s eyes. Cas puts his hand on Sam’s head, not stroking his hair this time, touching like he does when he’s healing. And Sam is elsewhere.

It’s like an out-of-body experience, except Sam’s still tethered. He’s tied to his body by his breathing, like a line of oxygen going down to a diver. The breathing is steady, even. Sam watches. Cas is unbuckling Sam’s belt, undoing his fly, pulling his jeans and boxers down around his kneeling knees. Sam can see what Cas is doing here, how he’s gathering things, weaving them in, the cut thumb, some old concussions, the tangle of jealousy, the twisting need to be hurt. Sam’s body goes on breathing, deeply and calmly. Cas touches his cock. Sam watches. Cas’s touch is clinical and playful. It’s something Sam would respond to if he weren’t elsewhere.

“We’re going to go through this,” Cas says, like he’s the Attending, lecturing to a crowd of medical students. He moves his fingers up Sam’s shaft, like a flautist practicing a tricky passage, and rubs his thumb over the slit. 

_Put on your rings_ , Sam wants to say. He’d like to see Cas’s hand on him when it has the rings on. And, _Let’s go to the beach again._ And, _Did you know that moose, unlike horses, can kick in all directions? They’re limber._ Sam may have read the moose entry on wikipedia a few times recently. But it’s Cas who goes on talking. Sam goes on breathing calmly in one place and watching from another, while precome blurts from his cock and his throat arches back and his arms test the knotted shirt sleeves.

“You’re going to come. And then I’ll call you back. No evasion.”

That isn’t really fair, Sam thinks. It’s not like he’s usually guilty of orgasm evasion. But maybe that’s Cas’s point. He wants Sam to, to practice that kind of presence at other moments. Not to get twisted round and end up with a mouth full of salt. 

He’s going to find out in a moment, anyway. Cas’s hand is moving faster. His breathing is like Sam’s, perfectly steady, but the two aren’t in sync. It makes for a complex rhythm. Sam watches his balls draw up and white come splash up his chest. Semen looks way too much like coconut milk. Or maybe _vice versa_.

Cas turns and looks right at him.

“Sam. Come back.”

Sam’s broken his fair share of bones. He’s familiar with the moment when something gives, the buckling aphasia that comes before the pain. This is like that. There’s a long, stretched pause for the recognition. Then Sam smacks into pleasure like he’d tripped off the high dive into hard water.

Everything fractures and goes sideways. Cas’s intent face looks like a Picasso, one of the weird ones. Sam opens his mouth to speak, to make sense. All that comes out is a moan. Cas bends closer, as though he’s politely trying to catch what Sam’s saying. Smug bastard. And Sam wants, he wants to be articulate, to take action, but he can’t. There’s no action or reaction here, only reflection, the depths of him trembling under Cas’s face. He already came. There’s nothing for his body to do with this. Sam just has to sit at the center of himself and take it.

Castiel’s face is there behind Jimmy’s and it’s gold, it’s all gold, it’s a lion. The lion comes down to the pool of Sam’s pleasure and stoops to drink. It’s the lion on the brass banisters. Sam closes his eyes against the dazzle. The lion laps and the pleasure diminishes slowly. Sam sways with the loss and the gain. Then he folds into Cas’s trenchcoated shoulder and groans. Cas strokes his hair.

“Sam,” says Cas’s voice after a while.

Sam opens his eyes and pulls back. Cas is still fully clothed, of course, all calm and collected. He hasn’t broken a sweat. But his hair is disheveled. 

“Are you well?” Cas asks. He stands and reaches down to help Sam up.

Sam just had a sexual fantasy involving a banister. That’s the opposite of OK. But he’s, he feels good. Present. Here with Cas. 

“Fantastic,” he says to Cas, “I’m fantastic.”


End file.
